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Just a thought but you and I may end up with cancer some day.I do understand your frustration from being asked this from your well to do relatives.I guess I might reply to them with a request that they donate to an AIDS charity in return.Go on to tell them of the needs and shortage of funds.Staying calm and chipper during this conversation is always helpful.

While I have not been solicited by my family, we do get asked often at work and phone calls at home.My usual response is, "I wish you luck in your fund raising but I have my own list of favorite charities.".

I never resent anyone asking me to donate to a cause, because it tells me something about the person. Any person, who cares enough, to spend their time in the pursuit of helping others, has done nothing wrong in my eyes. The fact that they may not support my causes does not matter. What matters is they care enough to get involved and if I don't wish to donate, I simply tell them so.

I also think that folks who are personally touched by tragedy, are more inclined to become passionate about their cause, usually hoping to spare another the pain they endured. I have no problem advocating for my causes, but I could never discount another person for doing the same.

WHERE THE CALLS COME FROM One of the telemarketing offices of the Police Protective Fund, at 10438 US 19 in Port Richey, is buzzing with activity on a Thursday evening. A dry-erase board is used to log calls and donations at the telemarketing office of the Police Protective Fund at 6452 Ridge Road in Port Richey. Damian Muziani is an aspiring actor whose website lists credits on the dating show Average Joe and an episode of America&#8217;s Most Wanted. He is listed as the sole owner of Outreach Calling.

Four years ago, charity regulators in 38 states banded together to take down one of the most deceptive charity solicitors in America.

In an unusual show of force, they marshaled resources from across the country and targeted Community Support Inc.

An investigator in Iowa posed as a donor and secretly recorded calls coming from boiler room operations around the country. Investigators in Missouri spent five months digging through the company's records.

Again and again, they found evidence that the company's employees were lying to donors. Phone operators exaggerated how much money would get to the needy and falsely promised that help would go to people nearby, regulators said.

When it was all done, state officials levied a $200,000 penalty and hoped they had sent a message to the charity industry.

The effort failed.

Within months, the same people who had built Community Support into a multimillion-dollar business had moved on to a new telemarketing company. Boiler room workers were once again dialing unsuspecting donors on behalf of America's worst charities and collecting huge fees for their services.

In a few short years, the new telemarketer was collecting millions of dollars annually on behalf of many of the same charities that had benefited from Community Support's lies.

This is how charities and their for-profit solicitors are regulated in America.

Unscrupulous operators collect hundreds of millions of dollars each year while fooling donors. When they get caught, they have little to fear, even if regulators try to shut them down. They simply reopen in another place or under a new name, leaving regulators none the wiser.

The Tampa Bay Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting interviewed regulators in more than 20 states and took the first national accounting of actions against charities and solicitors by piecing together documents from across the country. Of more than 8,000 violations, reporters identified about 1,000 serious cases and tracked what happened to the offenders in many of them.

Among the findings:

• More than 35 charities and their hired solicitors have been caught breaking the rules multiple times but continue to take money from donors. The most frequent violators have been cited five times or more. One solicitor has been cited 31 times and is still in business.

• Bans issued by state regulators are meaningless. Over the past decade, at least a dozen solicitation companies and charities have been forced out of one state only to continue raising donations elsewhere.

• State regulators make it easy for operators to start over. Instead of targeting individuals, they often ban only the charity or the fundraising company, leaving executives free to move to a new organization. Regulators have not even created a national list to track charity violators or a formal system to share information.

• Charity regulation offices nationwide are consumed with paperwork. They collect reams of information on charities but don't analyze it for signs of fraud. Florida has issued hundreds of fines for late paperwork, but has blocked only a handful of charities from soliciting in the state over the past decade.

• When states do take action they typically issue a small fine and require no admission of guilt, even for the worst offenders. The most common penalty is $500, a small price for organizations that collect millions.

Most reputable charities raise money using their own employees. They don't rely on professional solicitors, whose profits are dictated by the success of cold calls to potential donors.

Charities that do rely on telemarketers direct millions of dollars annually away from worthwhile causes and into their fundraisers' pockets.

The Times and CIR spent a year identifying the 50 worst charities in America based on the enormous sums they divert to for-profit solicitors.

Over the past decade, these charities have relied on deception to generate more than $1.3 billion in donations. About 75 percent went to pay charity executives and the solicitors who raise the donations.

While most charities never run afoul of regulators, three-quarters of the charities on the Times/CIR list have been cited at least once.

Eight of the 50 have been banned in at least one state but continue collecting donations elsewhere.

Repeated efforts to crack down on high-cost solicitors and to stop fraudulent organizations from moving to another state have failed. In part that's because well-respected charities have lobbied to prevent stricter regulations.

More than a decade ago, several states tried to pass rules to limit how much money charities could pay to professional solicitors. That would have given regulators a clear-cut way to go after the worst offenders.

But in 2003, more than 200 charities, including the American Heart Association, Easter Seals and the National Wildlife Federation, supported arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court to prohibit states from limiting how much a charity can pay its solicitation companies.

"The laws are so weak in this area that when you finally get someone it's pretty much a slap on the wrist," said Dean Zerbe, who investigated charities while he was senior counsel for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. "It's probably the most frustrating part of it. There are some really bad actors and when you finally bring the book on them, they're back at it."

The Internal Revenue Service grants charities their tax-exempt status and can audit their annual financial filings. Once charities start raising money, oversight is largely left to the states. The system is so fractured it's difficult to know even who is in charge.

In Pennsylvania, it's the Department of State; in California, the attorney general. Florida leaves its charity regulation to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs. Texas has two different departments enforcing three different statutes that apply only to certain types of charities.

The rules from state to state are even harder to follow.

At least 39 states and the District of Columbia require charities or professional solicitors to register before they start collecting donations. Twenty-three states require charities to undergo an annual audit.

In at least 20 states, charities must report the results of every solicitation campaign run by a professional telemarketer.

Some states ban these telemarketers from hiring anyone convicted of a financial crime. And a few force telemarketers to file copies of their phone scripts, to make sure the pitches don't mislead donors.

But every state agency's authority ends at the state line, leaving them ill-equipped to stop bad charities, which typically operate on a national scale.

The IRS could do more.

Some charity experts say the federal agency does not aggressively go after fraudulent nonprofits because they don't pay taxes. That means cases against them don't generate revenue.

The IRS has been even more reluctant to take on charities for high fundraising costs because such cases are difficult to win, experts say.

As a result, regulation falls largely on a patchwork of state agencies, said Paul Streckfus, a tax lawyer who formerly worked for the IRS.

"The IRS needs somebody at the top with real guts, who says, 'It's my responsibility to weed out this corruption,' " Streckfus said. "There's a great vacuum out there when it comes to the regulation of charities. And there's no evidence there will be any improvement."

IRS officials would not comment on how their agents monitor charities. Citing financial privacy laws, they also declined to provide the names of any charities that lost their tax-exempt status because of fundraising abuses.

To chart how charities are regulated, the Times and CIR went state by state, examining laws and interviewing authorities across the country.

Reporters also asked regulators in each state to provide a list of disciplinary actions taken against charities and solicitation companies.

Regulators in 38 states had no such list. Many of them said the only way to identify charities that had been cited was to look at old press releases and comb through newspaper reports.

These states offer donors no way to check on past violations. As a result, the public continues giving blindly to the nation's worst charities.

The Times and CIR pieced together the available information going back at least a decade to create the first public database of regulatory actions against charities and their fundraisers....

Recently I was involved in a fundraising to pass marriage equality in Washington State. Many, Many times when I would reach out to friends and colleagues for a donation I was met with a response of "I would absolutely love to donate to your cause, do you know I am also involved in XYZ charity? We also are seeking donations for ___"

At first I thought, jeeze I could save a lot of time and money if I just wrote a big check myself and called it a day. But in the end, I came out of the experience with much more. I ended up donating to MS, American Heart Assoc, Special Olympics etc while I was seeking donations for marriage equality.

What I came out of it was everyon I reached out to was very generous. Both in my cause and in their own.

Not only do I fundraise for Relay for Life, but I participate in the relay itself. One of the reasons is my mother died of Lung Cancer last year and several times during her illness she /we were offered help from a patient assistance service funded by the American Cancer Society, something as little as a ride service to radiation/chemo means alot to a cancer patient and their family. The San Antonio Area Relay keeps all the funds for the local area ( I think admin costs are 20%). That's why I ask for donations. Not everyone in my family donated, but it doesnt mean they are stingy or that I dont love them